POETS LOST

The FOLLOWING ENTRIES ARE BY POETS WHO I KNEW WHO ARE NOW
EITHER DEAD OR MISSING FROM EVERY SEARCH I’VE MADE. THEY HELPED SHAPE MY OWN PET
IC THOUGHT AND IDEAS.
Don Federman
A former editor of the University of Florida’s sometimes-banned publication, THE
NEW ORANGE PEEL. He once wrote a note telling me I was “the Goddess of Amity.”
A lover of Zen and a lover of beautiful women, though he wore horn-rimmed gla
sses and was slight of build, Don was one of the most romantic writers I’ve ever
known. We lost track of each not long after my disastrous year in New Orleans
: things just were never the same.
IN A LOVER’S EMBRACE
by Don Federman
Lovers, in your embrace lies the world’s future
Let the proud, obdurate, principled
suffer your intensity
Smother their hate with your arms
Make sweet their griefs with your lips
Dissipate their anxiety with your
serene gaze
Wash away their sins of strangement
The world has thought itself
into prostration
Make virile and alive again its ivy-covered bastions
Fill the cup with quiet desire
That patriots and patriarchs should become
Lovers too
For tomorrow’s su n radiates from your bodies
The dawn coming with the first kiss….
Jan. 1963

GENE COURSON
He played the lead role in Bradenton Florida, Manatee High School’s The King & I
, and he was not just believable. He was unbelievable. Magnificent! We were i
n the sophomore play together, just four of us, and I grew to think of Gene as a
great poet and writer, though I was told he committed suicide sometime after we
all split up top go to college or wherever. Gene? Dead? He was a genius: we
had a group, a kind of secret society, where we passed around our masterpieces.
Orlanda Brugnola, now a pastor and artist (who has refused to respond to my ca
lls and emails: I suppose because of my connection to Lee Oswald) was a member
of that ‘coterie.’ Here are three poems Gene gave to me, which I treasured:

AN OPEN LETTER
By Gene Courson
I have been held
In many more vagrant arms
Than you will ever know,
when all I knew was a name
and a place and the glitter
of the neon signs outside.
And while adhering to your rules
I have broken you,
For, on a journey through
The fields of hell, I sang more clearly
Than all your flaxen angels.
Go take your idols,
Go take your blazing banners
And claim the place of light,
For twice, wice in the darkness
I have burned more brightly
Than you could ever know,
When I knew all – a name and a place
And the glitter of a truth
Which all your lights could not diminish.
1961

absurdly s.o.s
by Gene Courson
help
i am
crying help
and you
keep telling
me
how very
charming
i am
help

the world is no damn good

by Gene Courson
the world is no damn
good
and neither are you
or me either
or anyone else
for that mater
except
maybe just one
beagle
in east bend north Dakota
and I’m not too
damn sure
about him.
I think maybe he’s queer.
The final poet was many things in his life….I did not appreciate him as I should
have…I cannot find him anywhere…but wish I could…I knew he understood me….he c
ared about wanting to be GOOD. He cared about trying to find the least harmful
path through life. I had been quite damaged by life when we met again. I had b
een through the painful ordeal of having my life destroyed in New Orleans by gre
at
 powers. Greg Peters was a runner on scholarship a Rice University when we met
again. In his characteristic way, he simply handed over his notebook to me ab
out his thoughts and feelings. I was unable to keep most of that notebook: over
the years, pages were destroyed by thieves and vandals, along with much else th
at had been precious to me. Evidence destroyed also meant most of Greg peter’s w
ritings did not survive. But what did, I present here:
Greg Peters’ poem for me, when he met me again, miserable, though I had plenty o
f friends, and was trying to make peace with God after what had happened in New
Orleans, and with my life’s dream to cure cancer and help people ruined (I had
a baby by then, and was painting. He understood the paintings very well):
May 26, Monday
For many years she now has been
within her darkened room
whose walls are filled with painted works
each hidden by the gloom.
Many people stared outside
throughout the night and day,
they see the room, sometimes the gloom,
but rarely do they stay.
A few came in –she knows now why—
but then they soon depart
They take a little part of her
And always leave the art.
Someday he’ll come and he will see
The paintings on the wall:
The room will brighten like
The dawn
And she will give him all.
--1969 Houston, TX---

From the WRITINGS OF GREG PETERS

The environment is constantly offering me choices, or so it seems to me.
I found once (on a gifted high) that one should do the task at hand and
Found that others have advocated the same, cf Carlyle in “Sartor Resartus.”
But when others make demands, either tacit or overt, I sometimes don’t have
that strong assurance which guides me at some other times (only faith, lightly
sprinkled with seemingly rational observations keeps me from thinking I am
deluding myself in believing in this guidance).
I have much to learn about living in the present.
…Buffie feels more like a little girl than a woman even though she has a very
mature
attitude about selflessness…She says I make her feel both like a little girl and
a woman. She feels somewhat inferior, she says, because my intellectual level
seems so much greater than hers. I have told her that I have just had more time
to read, study, and experience than she, and otherwise , we are equals.
As a man thinketh, so he is.
Learn never to criticize in word or thought.
Identify oneself in all that breathes
and feels.
Don’t think of the future unless absolutely necessary.
Don’t plan—do what you have to do.
More forgiving, More tolerant, More loving,
More harmonious in conduct
and attitude,
so our environment will appear pleasing
to us.
I must totally cease to feel bad a what seems to be “my” problems.
I must cases thinking about how my environment
(people, food, shelter, grades) is helping me and think about
what I am giving to the environment.
Only in taking this attitude, I believe, can I hope to find that “peace of God t
hat passeth all understanding.”
Greg also wrote that pain is merely discomfort, most of the time,
and as a discomfort, it can be handled without complaining. I have tried to live
by that rule, as I happen to live in constant pain, which most people do not re
alize. I take that “Spock” attitude
and forget about the pain gnawing at my back and back, and smile, for I have th
e gift of life.
And I had the great joy of knowing these three talented, inspiring and romantic
men.
JVB